“The Adventist Church was born and raised in mission—it was its first love.”

With compelling words Michael Ryan, director of Global Mission, opened the second “Window on Mission” focused on “the 10/40 window,” an area encompassing 66 percent of the world’s population and some of the least evangelized, most impoverished countries.

Ryan spoke of the diversity in the 10/40 window and the challenges that diversity creates for mission. According to Ryan, the 10/40 window includes 88 countries, including Japan, India, and China. The majority of the world population of Muslims reside in the 10/40 window, as well as 800 million Hindus and millions of Buddhists and animists.

“We have no choice. The mandate is ours. We must go,” declared Ryan.

After specialists in mission highlighted areas of opportunity and challenge in the 10/40 window—contextualization and world religions, training members and leaders, raising awareness, and positioning the church for change and action—comments from the floor were solicited.

“We need to allocate much more of our resources,” said Gerald Lewis, from the Northern AsiaPacific Division.

“We need venture capital. We need to take more risks.” Greg Saunders, of the Africa-Indian Ocean Division, agreed, while voicing another concern. “We need venture capital, but we also need venture people in strategic locations.”

“We have to adopt new materials and new methods of evangelism for non-Christians,” stated Jonathan Kuntaraf, General Conference.

Another delegate also noted that Newbold College offers five full-time scholarships in Islamic studies in an effort to increase the number of workers reaching Muslims worldwide.

Some delegates identified challenges faced in the 10/40 window.

James Wu, from Taiwan in the Northern Asia-Pacific Division, pointed out that Christians are sometimes prevented from working in the 10/40 window because of their religious affiliation. Max Jose Pierre, from the Africa-Indian Ocean Division, underscored the problem of restrictions on religious liberty in many countries in the world.

He suggested that the Internet and cassette ministries were valuable tools to overcome these problems.

The importance of family systems in evangelism was highlighted by Karen M. Flowers, associate director of family ministries for the General Conference.

“We think family relationships will be a meaningful piece of the dialogue,” said Flowers.